Amidst the chaos outside and the finger-pointing inside, the sixth ministerial conference of the WTO has gotten off to a rocky start. Yesterday as they addressed reporters in separate briefings, U.S. trade representative Rob Portman and his EU counterpart, Peter Mandelson, took turns criticizing each other’s approaches to farm trade. Portman called on the EU to agree to a date to eliminate export subsidies for farm goods. Mandelson pointed out that was easy for him to say — the U.S. doesn’t really use export subsidies — and pointed to U.S. food aid programs that he said act as de facto export subsidies.

Meanwhile, without movement on agriculture, there can be no progress on other areas such as industrial goods and services, where U.S. companies stand to reap huge gains if countries such as Brazil and India open their markets. But these countries are adamant — unless such openings are matched by farm-subsidy reform in the rich countries, there will be no deal.

Right now, the EU is taking the heat for their refusal to negotiate any further cuts in agriculture. This heat is richly deserved. But the U.S. needs to go further — not just to strengthen its negotiating position, but for the good of its economy, which stands to gain from agreements in other areas; its taxpayers, who currently bear the burden of paying for multi-billion dollar farm programs; and its farmers, who are trapped in a welfare-style dependency on the federal government for aid. This is to say nothing of farmers in the developing world, who would get higher prices for their goods were the U.S. to make deep cuts to its subsidies.

A good way to start, as I argued yesterday, would be to stop trying to get a loophole for counter-cyclical payments built into the new agreement. The U.S. could get a lot of mileage from announcing that it was dropping such a loophole from its negotiating position.